Author: The Bearded Iris
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In honor of Mother’s Day tomorrow, I want to share with you one of my favorite posts from 2011 about my own incredible mother… a woman who continues to inspire me every day. Happy Mother’s Day!

Going through my baby pictures recently really got me thinking…

Are you a perfectionist?

I am.

Not in every part of my life, but in many ways, yes.

For instance, I don’t finish most of the projects I start because I fear they won’t be good enough. Or perhaps I am waiting to buy the perfect tool to make the perfect ____________ (scrapbook page, stained glass window, hand woven basket, quilt square, granny square, beaded chandelier… pick a craft, any craft).

This is a very common trait in people with clutter issues. Oh fine, I’ll say it, hoarders.

Thirteen years ago this month, I quit a good job to stay home with my two-year-old son, Vincent.

We had moved from California to North Carolina—not for my husband’s job as most people assume when they hear we relocated cross-country, but for mine.

My husband agreed to temporarily leave work and do the stay-at-home dad thing while I brought home the bacon as a training manager for a technology company. I was pretty good at it (at first), and with my bonuses I was on target to earn about $100,000 that year. Well, I would have earned that much… had I lasted more than 9 months there.

But I didn’t.

Because in the fall of 2001, my sweet little Vincent came home from preschool with his first school pictures and everything changed.

Last April I had the privilege of participating in a national show called “Listen To Your Mother.” Being chosen for the inaugural Atlanta cast and getting to perform one of my original pieces in front of a live audience on stage in a beautiful theater was a dream come true and I’ve been anxiously awaiting the day when I could share it with you…and see it myself.

Ever since that fateful day in 1977 when I crashed my bike and broke my arm in two places after my brother and I followed our mother’s explicit instructions to “GET OUT. TAKE YOUR BIKES. AND DON’T COME BACK UNTIL THE STREET LIGHTS COME ON,” I stopped listening to my mother.

She told me not to pierce my ears. Result? Double pierced on both sides at age 13 by some clueless teenaged Piercing Pagoda trainee at the Monroeville Mall. Long term result? Thirty years later my ear holes are about as lopsided as my knockers. Continue reading

It’s a widely known fact (i.e. “pin-worthy” quote) that one of the main reasons people give up on their dreams is because they focus on how far they still have to go instead of how far they’ve already come.